Society ‘suffers’ from this drug

The CEO of the Nor'West Community Health Centres in Thunder Bay disagrees, however.

"I'm a little surprised the federal government is allowing this to happen," Wendy Talbot said.

"From our perspective it is a huge problem."

Levesque added a generic version will mean a return to higher addiction — and — crime rates.

"It’s not just the use of these products, it's all the other factors that come along with it," he said.

"It's how individuals get the money to buy them illegally. It's not just buying in some cases, there are robberies," he added. "I think it's really unfortunate — and not just for the city of Thunder Bay but the outlying areas — we're going to see some real issues with it."

Levesque said the addiction rate in northwestern Ontario is the highest in Canada and the move to manufacture generic OxyContin "isn't going to help that."

And that’s something Talbot said she worries about too.

"We struggle as an organization to deal with the day-to-day fallout of people addicted to this drug," she said.

"It has a huge impact on individuals and families and I think society at large suffers from this particular drug because it's very easy to get addicted to this drug. And once you are on this drug it's incredibly difficult to get off it."